This site aggregates Arizona's political blogs. If you would like to have your blog added to the list, contact site administrator Mark B. Evans at mevans@tucsoncitizen.com.
Your blog must allow RSS feeds.
For a list of all the blogs aggregated, see below.
The White House is threatening to veto the House version of the farm bill, citing its 3 percent cut to food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). But consider this: The cost of the program has doubled in the last five years, costing $80 billion last year, and a record 47.8 million Americans now use the program—a 70 percent increase since 2008. If the economy has “vastly improved,” as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney put it, shouldn’t we be ...
As a legislative liaison for an agency of the executive branch, I witnessed numerous budgets from their initial framework through the finished product, including negotiations and committee hearings. I was also a House majority staffer, where I helped outline and communicate several state budgets. It was shocking and frustrating to have my first budget as a state legislator be the least transparent in recent memory.
It is unprecedented for the Legislature to pass a budget without an Appropriation...
Thank you State Representative Adam Kwasman for standing up to Obamacare and Governor Brewer and for conservative principles and the rule of process in the Arizona Legislature!
Reposted from the Washington Examiner for all the blind followers or corporate cronyists of Governor Brewer.
By Philip Klein Senior Editorial Writer
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, working with Democrats against members of her own party, rammed through a vast expansion of the Medicaid program under Obamacare through the state legislature, putting federal taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in health care spending.
Despite claiming to oppose President Obama’s health care law, Brewer embraced...
The Associated Press editorializes, “As a candidate, Barack Obama vowed to bring a different, better kind of leadership to the dysfunctional capital. He’d make government more efficient, accountable and transparent. He’d rise above the ‘small-ball’ nature of doing business. And he’d work with Republicans to break Washington paralysis. You can trust me, Obama said back in 2008. And — for a while, a...
The battle over the Arizona expansion of Obamacare resembles the fight between David and Goliath. The pro-expansion team has millions of dollars, powerful lobbyists, support from all Democratic legislators, most if not all of the media and a few Republicans who have defected to their cause.
You’ve probably heard radio ads, watched commercials on ESPN or received a full page glossy mailer promoting their “conservative plan.” The only problem is that conservative legislators do not support i...
Additional information is available at: www.urapc.org
On Tuesday former Arizona State Senators Frank Antenori and Ron Gould formed a committee named “The United Republican Alliance of Principled Conservatives,” or URAPC. The committee was formed for the purpose of stopping Obamacare and its associated Tax on hospital stays. Defeating Governor Brewer’s ill conceived and unconstitutional legislation must be referred to the ballot so it can be vetoed by the people of Arizona.
There’s evidence, and then there’s supposition and rhetoric based on emotion without any data. The latter screams that anyone who calls for entitlement reform hates poor people and wants grandma to eat cat food. The former knows that when entitlement states collapse, the poor suffer the most.
Absent reform, ours will eventually collapse. So who hates the poor—those who want t prevent that, or those who simply demagogue the subject to increase their own power?
Hamel: Future Insolvency Of Social Security, Medicare Requires Urgent Action
Arlington, Va. – The Social Security and Medicare trustees today released their 2013 annual report, detailing the fiscal condition of two of the most important federal programs for seniors. Medicare added only two years of solvency, with the hospital insurance trust fund due to be exhausted by 2026, and Social Security is still projected to be i...
“IRS May Have Targeted Conservatives More Broadly”
McClatchy reports, “A group of anti-abortion activists in Iowa had to promise the Internal Revenue Service it wouldn’t picket in front of Planned Parenthood. Catherine Engelbrecht’s family and business in Texas were audited by the government after her voting-rights group sought tax-exempt status from the IRS. Retired military veteran Mark Drabik of Nebraska became active in and donated to conservative cau...
POLITICO reports, “President Barack Obama’s approval rating took a hit amid three controversies surrounding his administration, including an investigation into the IRS unfairly targeting conservative groups seeking nonprofit status, a new poll Thursday showed. Obama has a 45 percent approval rating and a 49 percent disapproval rating — compared with a 48 percent approval, 45 percent disapproval rating from ...
The Washington Guardian reports, “The Internal Revenue Service can improve its handling of tax examinations and audits, allowing it to recoup more of the estimated $450 billion annually in unpaid taxes, investigators said. Although not directly tied to the embattled tax-exempt office that has come under fire from lawmakers this week, the report by the Government Accountability Office shows there’s still room for improve...
In case you missed it, the Arizona Executive and Legislative branches are embroiled in a battle over expanding Obamacare’s Medicaid program in Arizona. Here is the latest Friday poll gauging our reader’s position on this issue. Votes are scheduled in the Arizona House next week.
Survey reveals Arizona entrepreneurs’ deep skepticism of federal funding promises
PHOENIX, Ariz., May 14, 2013 — In a poll released today by their leading association, small-business owners overwhelmingly oppose the high-stakes effort at the Arizona State Capitol to expand Medicaid coverage to all Arizonans at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level as envisioned by the federal healthcare law.
The recent survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB/Ariz...
“On Jobs Tour In Texas, Obama Offers Little New Hope For Jobs Progress In Washington”
TIME reports, “President Barack Obama’s campaign-style, jobs-focused swing through the Texas technology core on Thursday was notable mainly for what it left out—any plan for putting his proposals into law. … Ostensibly Obama flew to a Democratic enclave in the deep-red state to pitch his previously announced plan for 15 nationwide manufacturing innovation institutes an...
To all Arizona taxpayers and health care consumers:
When it comes to the fiscal costs and human damage of expanding Medicaid/AHCCCS under ObamaCare, we know that things will turn out badly. How do we know? Because we’ve been there, and we’ve done that. Here is what past experience, here in Arizona and elsewhere, tells us about the proposed expansion:
1) The Medicaid expansion will cost much more than projected. 2) The expansion may do nothing to help low-income Arizonan...
Just in time for Senate consideration of the immigration reform bill, the Heritage Foundation added fuel to the debate with an astonishing estimate of the cost of amnesty: $6.3 trillion.
The cost estimate was released as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepared for consideration of the bill in a session set for Thursday. Tuesday marked the deadline for committee members to submit amendments.
Robert Rector, the lead author of the Heritage estimate,...
Market Watch reports, “The U.S. created a net 165,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said Friday. The increase surpassed the 135,000 forecast of economists polled by MarketWatch. What’s more, the economy created an additional 124,000 jobs in March and February than previously reported. The number of new jobs created in March was revised up to 138,000 from 88,000, the Labor Department said, while February’s figure was...
Here’s a brief update on the push to expand Medicaid in the Arizona Legislature.
Rumors are circulating that Senator John McComish is attempting to orchestrate a coup d’état on Senate President Andy Biggs as former Senate President Steve Pierce looks on with plausible deniability. Why a coup? Because Senate President Andy Biggs is the one individual holding firm against a vote on Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in the State Senate. Both McComish and Pierce are supporting Gover...
More and more lawmakers in Washington are lining up to say we don’t have a spending problem and are ready to defend their massive deficits that add trillions to the debt. But a new poll from Public Notice shows that the vast majority of Americans disagree; the best way to improve the economy is by cutting spending and exercising some fiscal restraint. At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is warning that the debt is unsustainable without...
